When Ayat Mohammad Mahmoud was in the seventh grade, her father took her to work with him one day. He worked as a caretaker at a local private school in Jordan, and on this particular day, the students were participating in a First Lego League (FLL) robotics competition that her father thought she might like to watch. Mohammad Mahmoud was mesmerized watching the robots work their way through different challenges on the large game boards. "I fell in love instantly," she recalls. "I knew it was the only thing I wanted to do, and I knew I had the capability to do it."